A plea for 3.0 and beyond: Job Customization

[Vhailor]

Ultimately, a question like this boils down to how much you value balance. SE can theoretically offer customization (though none of the FF titles have featured much of it; in many ways, they shouldn't even properly be called RPGs), but doing so will guarantee that a degree of balance is sacrificed.

Personally, I'd rather see the customization. FFXIV is balanced almost to a fault - and the benefits don't outweigh the costs, in my opinion. I'd like to see skill trees, ideally, but I doubt both SE's motivation and ability to actually implement such a large change successfully. More realistically, I think a more carefully developed Merit system would be a fine addition to the title. I'm also surprised they haven't capitalized on Materia more; certainly a Magian-style system for collections of Materia that can be infused (and removed) in any gear could go a long way. For instance, for a Healer-style job, you could have Materia branches that focus on Spell Speed, add a small AoE effect onto single-target spells, improve MP maintenance, maybe add a small Stoneskin effect to cures (like Afflatus Solace in FFXI). These branches could be leveled via a Magian-like grind, and maybe inserted into, say, a body piece. The trick of this would be making sure that the paths offer meaningful, useful changes to how a job plays, without any one path being a clear-cut winner. Of course, another important piece here is, players would have to be limited to at most one of these types of Materia per job.

As an aside, while I admittedly haven't read the entire thread, I think the idea of simply opening up existing abilities would be a huge mistake. There are two large weaknesses here.

Firstly, far from adding customization, such a system would undoubtedly lead to more "required abilities" for people to be accepted in groups. I suspect there would quickly be a list of "best" abilities hashed out, which 90+% of people use, thereby eliminating the feel of customization. It would also cause more balance issues than it's worth. Customization options should most likely focus on allowing a player to shape how they play a predefined role, rather than allowing the role itself to dramatically change. For instance, DD should be able to customize how they deal damage, but they shouldn't be able to transform themselves into half-arsed healers or tanks (as an example).

Secondly, such a change would have an uneven impact in terms of how much time investment was required by a player. Individuals with everything at level 50 could take advantage of loosened restrictions the second they log on, whereas new players starting would have an (increasingly large) amount of leveling to do before they began to realize the full effects. I don't think that fits very well with the spirit of FFXIV.

Just my two gil, anyway.

[Morningstar1337]

Ultimately, a question like this boils down to how much you value balance. SE can theoretically offer customization (though none of the FF titles have featured much of it; in many ways, they shouldn't even properly be called RPGs), but doing so will guarantee that a degree of balance is sacrificed.

Yeah I'm gonna have to agree, a well balanced game and something like this seems mutually exclusive. I'm gonna compare and contrast this with two other SE titles:

• Final Fantasy XI: The precedent darling that everyone loves to compare to. The reason the game was so successful was (apart form not being WoW) the game offered a unique system (in part to the devs being total newbs when it came to MMO design) that allowed you to mix and match any 2 classes. However the balancing was so horrid that it lead to things being soloable in a very group oriented game and single classes like the infamous Ninja being misused. At also lead to things like NIN/RDM and other class comboes being preferred and anyone who deviated from those becoming shunned and derided as scrubs
• Bravely Default: This game also seems to have XI's job system (though it's likely that both cases were inspired from V), however it manages to balanced by making most of the jobs broken (Ninja has Utsusemi, Spiritmaster had Stillness, performer can build up BP allowing extra turns, Time Mage can do the same, Salve Maker can instill elemental weaknesses and exploit them as well get more potency with healing items and Conjurer can give massive buffs). That and the fact that its a Single-player game rather then an MMO means that there more options. However most of the jobs can still rip the game in two. BD has it's own take of crossclassing by using passive abilities from each job which is unfettered so a charater can have a Red Mage/Vampire with Hasten World or a White Mage/Black Mage with Katana Lore

In which case we got a MMO that left the balancing up to players a la Pokemon and a single player game that was balanced by being unbalanced, both were the result of the freedom to use 2 jobs at once, something more extreme than what the OP suggested but still proves that SE would have to be very careful in the unlikely scenario of them attempting something like this in XIV.

[Vhailor]

Yeah I'm gonna have to agree, a well balanced game and something like this seems mutually exclusive.

In fairness, I'm not sure I'd go quite that far.

FFXIV is arguably over-balanced right now, to the point where everything feels same-ish. Nobody wants balance to go away, but there can be a degree of customization allowed while maintaining a 'good enough' amount of balance. I absolutely think SE should take this path, too, as I explained in my original post.

Edit: I retract my point if you were specifically commenting on the OP's suggestion, in which case I totally agree.